


The perfect human being

by SnowDancer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Harry gets a new family, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowDancer/pseuds/SnowDancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard Stark always had been obsessed with Project Rebirth.<br/>His dream was to create the perfect human being. Strong, brave, good at heart and most importantly, intelligent. Had Steve been more intelligent, he never would have crashed that plane into the ice.<br/>What better way was there than to combine his and Steves DNA to achieve that dream?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Howard`s dream

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Darkness of Birth](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/137610) by njchrispatrick. 
  * Inspired by [DoB: F](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/137841) by Von. 



> This is it. My first fanfiction written in english.  
> I`m not a native speaker, so if you find any mistakes, please let me know and I will try to correct them.
> 
> I`m fiddling a bit with the timelines: Tony Stark is born in 1972 instead of 1970, Harry Potter is born in 1993 insetad of 1980 and Steve Rogers is defrosted in 2000 instead of 2010.  
> Ironman 1 and 2 already happended, Avengers is more or less happening right now and everything after that will be ignored.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading my story!

Howard’s eyes gleamed with a manic light.  


The success he`d been waiting for, for almost five decades, was so near he could smell it. He had worked on this project ever since Captain America had gone missing in the ice in 1945.  
That was 45 years ago. At first, he hadn’t thought it would take quite that long and be quite that complicated, but in the end, it was worth it.  


Project Birth.  


Admittedly, it was a rather uncreative name but very apt, considering its predecessor, Project Rebirth.  
It had started with Howard searching for Steve for months and having to admit that he had failed. Steve just couldn’t be found. Howard had looked for him, day and night, week for week, month for month. But in the end, he had failed. It was that simple.  
Sure, he still had gone out every couple of weeks to continue his search. Steve was his friend, after all. But another idea had taken up most of the space in Howards mind. A truly brilliant idea.  
What would make the perfect super-soldier even more perfect? What would`ve kept Steve from crashing the plane into the ice? Intelligence.  


Oh, Howard was sure that Steve had been very intelligent. He had to have been a very resourceful young man to survive the harsh times with the condition his body was in before the serum. And the serum took everything that was and enhanced it. But Steve wasn’t as intelligent as Howard himself. And so, Howard’s idea was born. He wanted to create the most perfect human being of all times.  
At first, the genius had tried to find a woman to bear Steve Rogers’s child, a woman with an IQ that was off the chart. But it was in vain. There wasn’t a single human in the world that even got near Howards IQ, let alone a woman. And so he had made his first adjustment to the plan. He wouldn’t just take some woman to create this child. He would take his own DNA.  
To make it possible, he had to spend endless hours in the bio-lab. He had by no means been an expert in biology, but he had made himself into one. He had overcome the laws of biology, where only a male and a female together could create a child. For him, it was possible to create a child out of two males, with the help of an egg-donor and a surrogate mother, of course.  


After he had taken that very first hurdle, they just kept coming at him.  
The second problem was that the two males had to be compatible with each other. If they were not, then the child would be an ugly, mutated thing with a life-expectancy of only a few hours, tops.  
And of course, Howard was not compatible with Steve Rogers. He nearly had thrown a temper tantrum worthy of a screaming three-year-old when he had found out. Only a few base-pairs prevented him from creating the perfect human. But he wouldn’t be a certified genius if he hadn’t found a way around that.  
It had been laughably easy in the end. He just had donated large amounts of money to every known hospital around the world and had persuaded them into letting him access their DNA-records. He had to find a woman with the perfect DNA for his cause.  
A child with such a woman could be compatible with Captain America.  
After years of searching, he finally had found one in Italy. Maria was all that he could have dreamed of in a wife. She was beautiful, kind and intelligent, but not overly so. And she didn’t ask many questions.  
She had been flattered by his attention and just a few months after he had begun courting her, the two married.  
Over the course of the next few years, they often had tried to become parents, but it just wasn’t meant to be. At least, that was what Maria thought. She had never realized that Howard had aborted each of those many pregnancies, because the preliminary DNA-test had shown that the child just couldn’t be compatible with Steve.  
Finally, the tenth pregnancy had yielded acceptable results. Howard couldn’t be sure, but it had been his last chance. The doctors had told him that Marias body couldn’t take any more pregnancies. And so, Howard had taken a leap of faith and allowed the child to be born.  


Anthony Edward Stark had been born in 1972; 27 years after Howard had started Project Birth. That the child was male had been a minor setback in his plan. He had hoped for a girl. Girls had their eggs since birth, whereas boys only started producing sperm when they hit puberty.  
If Tony had been a girl, Howard could already have his perfect human, but Tony was Tony and Tony was male. And that was that. Howard had had to wait again.  
But in the meantime, he had tested the boy in every way possible. Was he intelligent enough? Resilient against sickness? Head-strong or weak-willed?  
Tony had surpassed all of Howard’s expectations. He was even more intelligent than Howard himself. He had built his first circuit board at four, for crying out loud!  
But then, when Tony had been about five or six years old, another hurdle came along: Maria had caught him while he was in the process of sticking a needle into the boy`s arm. He hadn’t been able to talk himself out of that one. Maria had been screaming at the top of her lungs, mostly in Italian, but also in English. But the gist of it was clear: if she ever, ever caught him again, or just heard of him doing any funny business with her son, she would take him and he would never see the boy again. The end.  
Howard couldn’t afford to lose Tony, and so he had ceased all his DNA-experiments.  
Until a few months ago, that is. Tony had just celebrated his 21. birthday and was drunk. Really, really drunk. And Maria was off on some sort of charity gala. Howard couldn’t resist that temptation. He had tested Tony`s DNA and had then taken a sperm sample of his son.  
All he had had to do after that was find an egg donor and a surrogate mother.  


It really had been easy. He had contacted a fertility clinic in Great Britain, to keep it all under wraps until he deemed the time right. They had introduced him to a lovely couple, fresh out of school and in need of money.  
Lily and James Potter really were perfect. Lily herself was a completely healthy women, never had been sick a day in her life. It was the perfect environment for the perfect human. Howard had offered to pay for all of their expanses during the pregnancy and to even buy them a house to life in after the birth.  
The Potters had agreed.  
It was now nine months later. Lily Potter was about to give birth to the child of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. All Howard had to do was drive his wife home, catch his plane to Great Britain and collect the child.  
He was so close to getting what he worked for, for 45 years. The perfect human being. He just had to…

 

 

Howard and Maria Stark never made it home. A large van crashed into them from behind, pressing their car against the stony cliff on the right side of the street. At the speed they were going at, both Howard and Maria died immediately upon contact.  
James and Lily Potter waited a long time for Howard Stark, but when he didn’t show up, they decided to adopt the little boy. They named him Harry James Potter.  
Tony Stark never learned about his son. Not until nearly 8 years later.


	2. Beginnings, Ends and inbetween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the second chapter. From now on, I`ll try to update once a week. 
> 
> Have fun!

Lily Potter, nee Evans, had had several reasons to agree to be a surrogate mother. 

First and foremost: She loved children and she loved the miracle of live. Who was she to deny somebody the joys of parenthood? She herself couldn’t wait to have children with James. 

Secondly: James was practically infertile. Apparently, it was an old pureblood-problem. Over time, the conception-rate in pureblood families had gradually lessened, until every generation could only produce one healthy child, if they even managed to do that.  
James and Lily hadn’t wanted to risk miscarriages or an unhealthy child, so they had gone to St.Mungos to consult with the medi-witches and –wizards there. The result had been saddening, but expected. James had a really low chance of ever impregnating Lily. But that hadn’t deterred him in the slightest. “We`ll just adopt”, he cheerfully had said. But she could sense his despair at never having his own blood-related children.

Thirdly: Even though she and James were going to adopt one (or two, or three, one could never know…) child, Lily wanted to be pregnant, at least once in her life. She wanted to know the feeling of having a child, of protecting it with all that she had, and so much more. But she would never leave James for another man, just to be pregnant. As surrogate mother, she could have both James and the feeling of being pregnant.

And lastly: They were in desperate need of money.  
James wanted to prove to his father (as every Potter-heir had proved it to their fathers), that he was capable of supporting his own family. The Potter-fortune was big, but not without cause. The Potter-heir was not always the eldest child of the current head of house. All children of one Potter-generation were taken into account. Every one of them had a monthly allowance of the same amount, starting with the moment of their birth. It was their money, they could do with it, whatever they wished. They didn’t have to pay for clothes or food or anything that was needed for school. But if they wanted anything that went beyond that, they had to pay for it themselves. 

The allowance stopped with their graduation from Hogwarts.  
Sometimes, the children would have wasted all of their money on sweets, toys and elaborate pranks, without thinking about their future. In that case, they wouldn’t have any money left after their time in school. Those kids could never be the next head of house. But the children who saved their money and thought about necessary versus unnecessary expanses had potential.  
The money that was left in their bank accounts after their graduation would be all they had to build up an own business from scratch. The most successful child of each generation became the next head of the Potter-house, thus merging the old fortune with the new fortune, which in turn was used to support the new generation and every struggling member of the Potter-family.

Even tough James was the only Potter-child of his generation, he still wanted to abide by this tradition. He still wanted to prove to his father that he could make the Potter-fortune bigger and honor the family. 

There was just one problem: Sometimes, James was unbelievably stupid. Apparently, he never had realized what damage he and his friends, the marauders, had caused in their reign of terror over the school. Most of their pranks were good-natured and funny, but sometimes, they had gone awry and destroyed something.  
The schools policy was this: they would repair everything, but the student to cause the damage had to pay for it after their time in Hogwarts had ended. And as it was with most of Hogwarts rules, it was written down in “Hogwarts: A history”, so nobody had known about it until they were informed of this via four big school-owls.

And James, being the lovable idiot he always had been and knowing that neither of his friend could pay such high sums (Peter and Remus never had had much money and with Sirius disinheritance, he too was poor…) payed for all of their depts. With his allowance. After that, there was no allowance left.

On top of that, Lily’s parents had died some time ago and would have left her an inheritance but Lily’s sister Petunia somehow had gotten a hold of the will and had stolen all of it. So neither James nor Lily had any money left.

James parents had wanted to help, but James was incredibly stubborn and proud. He never would have taken the money. 

 

All of this reasons caused Lily to register at a fertility clinic as being available as surrogate mother. Soon enough, some rich guy from America was introduced to her and James, and the most exhausting time of her life began…

#+#

Lily`s pregnancy had by no means been an easy one… for James. She had had the most frightening mood swings and if she had had food cravings ad the same time… James still shuddered every time he thought about it. 

Lily would wake in the middle of the night and demand the most ridiculous things. One particularly memorable time, she hadn’t even known what she wanted and James had to dish up everything that came to mind. After he`d served her bacon, she`d asked him if he wanted to poison her. She nearly threw up when he served her baked beans and the toast they were accompanied with landed right in the middle of the face.

In the end, she ate fish-fingers and custard. And after that, she never wanted anything else. Always fish-fingers and custard. It sounded absolutely disgusting but James had tried it once, just out of curiosity. It wasn’t his favorite food, but he also couldn’t deny that it tasted good. In a strange way, but good nonetheless.

Lily also had had to pee at least once every hour. At first, James had found it immensely funny but after a while it was nothing if not annoying. Every time they had wanted to go somewhere, Lily had had to pee. Every night, Lily would go to the bathroom at least five times, waking James up in the process. And every time he had wanted to be spontaneous and have some adult time with his wife, Lily went and ruined the mood because she had to pee!

James had been at his wits end and horny as hell.

But now it would be over soon. Lily was about to give birth, Howard Stark was already informed and all he had to do was wait for the baby and let Lily crush his fingers in the process of giving birth.

That woman had one hell of a grip!

James was not sure that he would ever regain all of the mobility in his right hand.

#+#

It was over.

Finally, after 5 hours of labor, the little baby boy was here and slept peacefully in Lily`s arms. His beautiful Lily. Sweaty, red-faced and tired, and still the most beautiful woman in the world. James loved her with his whole heart and would never stop doing so.

And the little boy was as beautiful as Lily. Little tufts of jet-black hair stuck up in every direction, just like James` hair. His eyes were a beautiful sky-blue, but that could change with time. But James was sure that the boys` eyes would stay beautiful, regardless of their color. 

James was ripped out of his musings by Lily opening her eyes. She smiled tiredly at him and said softly: “He`s beautiful, isn’t he? I hope our child will be as beautiful as him.”

James could only nod. His throat was a little constricted, because now it hit him fully: The boy wasn’t his. He would have to let him go eventually, and maybe would never see him again. Even though he loved him already! It just wasn’t fair.

Lily looked at him with far too knowing eyes. “I know…. But we will love our own child just as much, and we will never forget this little one. He will always be in our hearts. No one can ever take that from us.”

Then his wife scooted over a little and patted the now empty space beside her on the bed. “Come on. Family cuddle time.”

James didn’t have to be told again. He laid down beside his wife, put one arm around her shoulders and used the other one to softly stroke the babies` cheek. He would enjoy this as long as he could.

#+#

A few days later, while James was waiting for his wife to wake up from her afternoon nap, he began to worry. Howard still hadn’t contacted him, and James couldn’t reach him by any means possible to him. Lily was allowed to leave the hospital the next day, but the little boy had to stay. The hospital knew that Lily only was the surrogate mother, so they wouldn’t be allowed to take the boy home with them. But they couldn’t just leave him!  
“Mr. Potter?”

James stopped staring out of the window and turned around.  
“Yes? How can I help you?”

A doctor had entered Lily`s room. James recognized him, he was one of the doctors assigned to Lily, but James couldn’t remember his name.

“The fertility clinic just called. They had news about the biological parents. Apparently, both Howard and Maria Stark had a fatal car accident. The clinic will send someone to pick the little boy up tomorrow.”

James tried to speak around his suddenly dry throat. “What will happen to him?”

The doctor looked sympathetic. “Neither Howard nor Maria Stark mentioned anything about him in their wills, nor did their son step forward to claim him, so he will be put up for adoption.”

James didn’t even think about it. “We`ll take him!”

The doctor smiled. “I had hoped you would say that. As his surrogate parents, you can claim him in the event of the biological parents death. The adoption process will be much easier for you and your wife. And the boy won`t have to spend any time in an orphanage. He can come home with you tomorrow.”

With that, the doctor left.

“So… we`re parents now?” came the soft voice of his wife.

James flinched. He hadn’t even thought about asking Lily. Slowly, he turned around to look at his now wide awake wife. “… congratulations, it`s a boy?”

Lily gave up on trying to look stern and gave him one of her most beautiful smiles. James couldn’t help but smile back. They were parents now. They had a little son. 

#+#

Harry James Potter was a force to be reckoned with. At just six months old, he already had been on his feet and ran around the house as if running was going out of style. He never sat still. His endless amounts of energy never ceased to amaze and to tire his parents. The boy could run circles around the couch for an hour, and then try to play tag with his father. 

Sirius had laughed himself silly the first time he had found an utterly exhausted James lying boneless on the floor, while his little son was climbing all over him. Then Harry had decided that Padfoot was as good a playmate as his father and just on hour later, Sirius had joined James on the floor.

He could also eat his weight in fruit, vegetables and soft meat in one sitting and still be hungry two hours later. But he never gained weight. Lily had been a little worried, but the medi-witch at St. Mungo’s had assured them that nothing was wrong with their boy. He had the perfect weight for a boy his age and as long as he didn’t gain more than a few pounds, they should let him eat as much as he wanted. The medi-witch explained that most likely, his magic core was eating up all the energy that the food provided.

James and Lily had been surprised at that. They never thought about Harry being magical, since both his biological parents had been muggles. They had been content with raising a muggle and had even contemplated leaving the magical world for his sake, but now, that wasn’t necessary. Harry was a muggle-born wizard and he would be accepted into Hogwarts. Lily and James couldn’t be prouder.

His first bout of accidental magic had been hilarious: Padfoot had stepped on Harrys most beloved “Baba”, his plush dragon. Harry hadn’t liked that one bit. Sirius still ran around with bright green hair. He could change it back himself and everyone else refused to change it back to its original state. Sirius had even tried to get Harry to do it, but unfortunately for him, green was Harry`s favorite color. 

And there was another thing: Harry was highly intelligent. He was now nearly one and a half years old and he was already talking. He had skipped the baby-talk phase. One day, he had just started talking as if he knew all the words but couldn’t bring his tongue to form them all. His sentences were mostly short, but always unfailingly polite. If he asked for something, he said please. If he got something, he said thank you. He never threw tantrums either. If he couldn’t get something he wanted, he would ask why. If the answer was satisfactory to him, he would let the subject go. If it wasn’t, he would ask again.

Harry also had a nearly insatiable thirst for knowledge. The word he used most often was why. He was interested in everything and highly frustrated at not being able to read. His picture books bored him, but he always tried to learn reading by himself. Up until now, he hadn’t been very successful, but at the rate he was going, James suspected it wouldn’t take him long.

All in all, Lily and James had the perfect little son, and couldn’t wish for more.

Oh, well… there was one thing. It would have been nice if they weren’t targeted by the most evil wizard of their time. They were in hiding, for almost a year now, and it began to wear them down. They couldn’t go out, and very few people could come and visit them. Their world consisted of just the three of them. Harry didn’t notice it much, but his parents did. They also worried what this isolation would do to Harry`s social skills. Except for one instance, when he had been about three month old, he had never seen another child. It had been a belated baby shower for Lily and Harry, and the Longbottoms had brought their little son Neville with them. The boys had slept together in a crib and when they had awoken, they instantly had taken a liking to each other. Sadly, just a few month after that, they had learned about the prophecy, which concerned those two boys. At first, they had thought that guards in front of their houses would suffice, but the poor Longbottoms had paid with their lives for that. As soon as the message of their fate had reached Dumbledore, he had bundled the Potters up and hid them under the Fidelius charm. Augusta Longbottom and Neville also were hidden, but in a different location, for safety reasons. 

And now they had to wait. For what, even they didn’t know. Both James and Lily knew that it was unrealistic to think they could hide until Harry was an adult, but at the same time, the hope that Voldemort would be killed by somebody else was very slim.

Right now, James enjoyed one of the few calm moments he had. Lily was upstairs, reading one of Harry’s favorite stories to him. It was Harry`s bedtime, but that meant only a few hours of peace for James and his wife. Harry never slept for long.

James let himself sink into the comfy chair in front of the fireplace and waited for Lily to come back down again.

Then the front door was ripped off of its hinges and crashed with a loud bang against the wall.  
James leapt to his feet, wand at the ready, before his eyes widened with recognition.

“LILY! TAKE HARRY AND RUN”!

Then he saw a bright green light and closed his eyes.

#+#

Steve Rogers opened his eyes to a blinding white light. It didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust, and soon he could see where he was. White walls, white furniture, white bedsheets, and an antiseptic smell. All of that told him one thing: He was in a hospital.

Steve sighed. He had been so sure that his days in hospitals had been over when he entered Project Rebirth.  
Now that his location was clear, he began to get input from his other senses. The sheets were unusual soft, not the scratchy kind he remembered from when he was a kid. The smell also wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been. And was that a radio? There hadn’t been one hospital room that had been equipped with a radio in his childhood and his mother never could afford to bring one either. But maybe that was a special service for soldiers? 

Steve began to listen to the program. A baseball game. But wait… didn’t he know that one? Steve grew suspicious. He had been to that baseball game! How could he hear it know in the radio? 

As soon as a red haired woman entered the room, Steve got up to ask questions. The woman tried to evade them, but Steve had had enough of it. He gently shoved the woman aside and went through the door. Outside, several soldiers at once tried to get Steve to go back to the room, but Steve knocked them out and ran. More and more soldiers followed him, and Steve didn’t know where to run, so he just smashed through wall after wall until he reached the street.

Then he ran until he was sure the soldiers stopped following him. His greater than normal stamina meant that he could outrun most humans in the world and he took advantage of that.

Finally, he stopped. And then he did a double take. Where the hell was he? How long had he been asleep? Everywhere he looked, there was technology he had never before seen! What was going on?

Steve slowly turned around to take everything in. High buildings, flashing lights, sleek cars and so much noise! He felt lost.

Suddenly, several black SUVs came to a stop in a circle around him. A man in a long leather trench coat and an eyepatch got out of one of them and approached him.

“At ease, soldier! Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.  
Steve was confused. „Break what?”  
The man looked at him stoically:“You've been asleep, Cap. For almost 60 years.”

Steve was at a loss. Should he believe this man? He didn’t even know his name. But everything around him pointed exactly in that direction. He was in the future. Then the shock hit him. 70 years. Peggy…

The man obviously could see right through him. “You gonna be okay?”  
Steve looked into the distance wistfully: “Yeah. Yeah, I just... I had a date…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of dialogue. I`m no good at writing small talk (or big talk...)  
> Also, I think everybody knows this, but that part at the end of the chapter is taken from "Captain America: The First Avenger".
> 
> Anyways: Next chapter should be out in about a week, most likely Monday or Tuesday.
> 
> Until then: Don`t be lasagna!

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first chapter.  
> Since it is my first try, I will wait for the reactions (comments and/or kudos) before writing the next chapter.
> 
> Constructive criticism is appreciated, flames will be ignored, and kudos will make me very happy!


End file.
